The one that got away

Mark Brown

12:01AM GMT 19 Jan 2006

Mark Brown reviews The Escapologist at the Tramway Theatre, Glasgow

In his well-known book Houdini's Box: On the Arts of Escape, author and psychotherapist Adam Phillips traced the life of the famous escapologist through a consideration of his complex psychology. It is difficult to imagine a book less immediately translatable to the stage. However, that is to reckon without theatre company Suspect Culture.

It is only two years since the Glasgow group astonished audiences with the visual effects of their mountaineering drama 8,000 Metres. Director Graham Eatough is, like Houdini himself, a master of the optical illusion. Few dramatists are better placed to attempt a combination of the visually spectacular and the psychologically nuanced.

But, early on in this production, with text by Simon Bent, author of the acclaimed theatre adaptation of John Irving's novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, there is a sense that The Escapologist is never quite going to cohere.

There is an attempt to blend together Houdini's life and work with Phillips's commentary on contemporary psychotherapy, yet, like oil and water, they resist combination.

Suspect Culture's long-established penchant for video and the projected image are applied to Houdini's biography and tricks, which become metaphors for the psychological struggles of the modern characters.

The opening scene, in which Paul Blair's troubled building contractor is lowered on to the therapist's couch as he dangles by his ankles from a chain, is powerful, both visually and thematically.

Yet, as Kevin McMonagle's wonderfully dry therapist plays host to a series of clients and family members, Bent's script begins to jar. The parallel conversations, in which a character speaks to another two, in different contexts, at one time, is a neat trick, but it is frustratingly ineffective. It gives the play a stilted structure and a flagging pace.

Actress Selina Boyack is on scintillating form as both a psychologically burned, deeply resentful doctor and the therapist's disillusioned wife. There is something of a latter-day Vivien Merchant in her Pinteresque control, vulnerability and underlying strength.

A co-production with Tramway and Plymouth's Drum Theatre, The Escapologist enjoys a fine cast, nicely tailored music by David Paul Jones and some memorable visual effects.

Ultimately, however, it feels like an audacious illusion which hasn't quite been pulled off.